


An atlas of the uncharted world

by lilith_morgana



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 19:18:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10542873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: Falling in love has always seemed so generic.





	1. On the strangest sea

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first in-game romance for ME:A and it sort of consumed me. That demanded fanfiction, as per usual. This will be (mostly) chronological stories, scenes and variations about Sara Ryder and Suvi Anwar.

  
_**Hydroponic Gardens, the Nexus** _   
  
  
  
She used to think she’d follow in her mother’s footsteps, a future painted in somber, dignified colors in a lab somewhere, cracking the _genetic codes of our future survival, love_ or something equally useful. Exciting, sure, but ultimately useful. She’s a Ryder, after all.   
  
_And look where that got us._   
  
No. Sara shakes her head, forcing away the doom and gloom that’s been holding her in tight grip ever since she woke up. That stifling, suffocating panic that definitely won’t save any arks or restore this half-abandoned space station.   
  
As a place of contemplation this garden spot is a strange choice. What little peace and quiet you might somehow manage to find, will soon be ripped open by chatter and comms and the restless crowds that find nothing better to occupy themselves with than standing around complaining. That last part will change now, she hopes. It _has_ to.   
  
“This was empty when I got here,” someone says behind her.   
  
The voice is soft and clear, like the plants around them. When Sara turns around, she sees the science officer - _Anwar_ , she recalls because she had asked Vetra twice, always distracted by something - standing there, leaning against the glass wall that’s said to contain recently fertilized soil from Habitat 7.     
  
“Right,” Sara says because she can’t really think of much else to say. There’s a whole galaxy-wide space of unspoken things at the back of her throat, a whole world of silent words that get lost in these budding plants in their makeshift home.   
  
“It’s hope, right there.” Doctor Anwar walks towards her, holding a datapad and a mug of coffee; she nods towards the plants or the soon-to-be-plants. “Even if it’s mostly dirt and seeds right now.”   
  
“We could use some hope.”   
  
The other woman nods as their eyes meet. She has a kind face, Sara thinks. A warm sort of gaze that studies you but doesn’t seem to judge you, unlike some of the scientists she’s met here on Nexus. They’re the kind of professionals who will only evaluate you based on what they think you can accomplish and what purposes they can use you for and she’s _done_ with that, that kind of philosophy belongs in the Milky Way along with other useless baggage.   
  
“I’ve studied the planetary scans. I’ve even had some hands-on experience with the Heleus soil samples.” Doctor Anwar holds up her datapad; Sara wonders if she’s the type to carry around all the research she’s ever done, just in case. She doesn’t appear to be, but you never know. “If you want I’ll send you my analysis on the native bacteria and microfauna. Sixty pages.”   
  
Sara rubs the bridge of her nose. “Oh. That’s… useful.”   
  
It actually _is_ , she knows enough of this field of science to know that much even if Sara is not the person who will be able to put the knowledge to good use.   
  
Doctor Anwar brushes it off, though. “You don’t have to be kind, I know it’s barely more than a summary.”   
  
And this, the words and the tone, this is _home_ in a strange, far-fetched kind of way. It’s home because it reminds her of studying late at the research lab and of hunting Prothean relics and listening to professors debating their origin and value every step of the way, their entire comm links cluttered with opinions and dead-certain statements. _This is of little importance, I daresay_ as if the Milky Way was an intricate human or asari construct and not something remarkable that had invented itself once upon a time. Sara has always been fascinated by the arrogance among academics, their confidence and quickly buried doubts. The scientists that walk into their labs already knowing they’ll come out with a cure or a breakthrough because what could be out there that might disprove their theories? And then of course the polar opposites, like Doctor Anwar. The ones set on a course but expecting to be rerouted, surprised, along the way.   
  
It’s home because it reminds her of her parents bickering and occasionally arguing about their work. Back then it hadn’t always felt particularly benign - arguments between one’s parents rarely do, she supposes - but now the memories have warped themselves slightly, bent around their own corners until they manage to make her _happy_ more than anything. Or maybe it’s just nostalgia.   
  
“Right,” she says again since it seems to be the deepest and most profound thing she can think of today. “I’m sure I’ll manage to read at least five pages before my head explodes.”   
  
“Oh, we wouldn’t want that, Pathfinder.”Doctor Anwar gives a low laughter, almost under her breath. It feels like sunlight in Sara’s chest.   
  
“I’d like to read it, though.” Does she? She nearly shakes her head at her own statement. “When I have the time.”   
  
“I’ll send it to you in a bit then.”   
  
“Good.” Sara smiles, catching Doctor Anwar’s gaze among the alien fauna and there’s a hope in that, too, somewhere.   
  



	2. A corner of a tiny corner

_**The bridge, Tempest** _  
  
  
  
  
She wonders if they all come off as desperate.  
  
The recently transferred crew on the Tempest, that is. Gil and Kallo and herself, enthusiastic like children to be getting out of the endless hold-up on the Nexus and actually do some of the work they were signing up for back in the Milky Way.  
  
Suvi certainly feels lighter as she walks around on the ship, compared to the routine-bound strolls along the levels at the Nexus. At some point when they had been waiting for eight months, Gil started challenging her, just to pass the time. They would send each other almost unsolvable puzzles and equations; he’d forward weird engineer stuff to her and give her one hour to summarize it, _no damn cheating_ ; she’d give him samples of her old exams from Uni. Competence development for the pathologically bored.      
  
Now here they are, finally, about to perform jobs that had begun to feel like they would never be in demand ever again. The corners of her mind are lit up, her hands are eager, her heart pounding: everything will be worth it in the end.  
  
It _has_ to. They can’t have left a whole galaxy behind for nothing because that’s not how the world works, their intergalactic societies aren’t founded on emptiness but on hope. Suvi _refuses_ the despairing thoughts before they even fully form in her head, denies that sort of hopeless, nihilistic thinking.  
  
The Pathfinder is much younger than she had expected a Pathfinder to be.  
  
_Brace yourselves_ , Kallo mouths the first time they open up the Tempest to its new owner and Suvi can’t help but smile even though she knows it’s not fair to Sara Ryder.  
  
Sara Ryder who stands in front of her now, again, going over something on her omnitool while Suvi finishes an email to one of the lab assistant at the Nexus. It’s been on her to-do list - one of them, the one titled Most Important - for a couple of hours already and she likes to tick off at least half that list before lunch.  
  
“So, did you read it?” she asks.  
  
For a moment the Pathfinder looks confused, then a shade of recognition in her eyes. Pretty eyes, Suvi notes and files away among the other unimportant things she picks up along the way. Sad, but so _pretty_ . And there’s a previously unmatched artificial presence wired to her system, a massive breakthrough in both neuroscience and cybernetics standing right here in front of her - she takes a deep breath, steadies herself against the high waves of geekiness, but the flurry of excitement in her chest won’t properly listen. _Don’t drool over the AI, Anwar._  
  
“The sixty pages of dirt?”  
  
“Well-”  
  
Suvi isn’t going to explain why it’s so funny to even _imagine_ that she’d be able to cover a whole field of research in sixty pages, that kind of humour is arrogant and she’d never admit to finding it hilarious in the first place. Let alone admit it to this woman who is, by all accounts, her superior on this ship. But doesn’t really _get_ science. Which is a perfectly fine lifestyle choice, even if it is rather suspicious for someone who’s studied Prothean artifacts and intergalactic history to such as extent that it’s mentioned in her dossier. Why _yes_ , Suvi has done her research.  
  
“ _About_ dirt,” the Pathfinder corrects herself, grinning now and Suvi returns the smile, predictably unable to resist.  
  
“You don’t have to read it. Leave the science to me.”  
  
“I will absolutely read it. When I have the time.” Something almost annoyed in her expression now, a touch of it outlining the words.  
  
Suvi scratches the back of her head, combing through strands of hair with her ever-restless fingers. “Of course.”  
  
There are so much she could talk about, so many questions she has to force herself not to ask because they are better left for another time or silenced altogether and instead she finds herself nervously babbling about narrow topics like her own research. Which, in all fairness, isn’t of interest to anyone outside her own specialisation. A flutter of memories surface: five glasses of wine to get through her friend Gina’s disputation on Elcor engineering, half a cheesecake to keep herself awake long enough to read her baby sister’s endless thesis on George Eliot and even Suvi's own early studies whenever the subject matter hadn’t been right up her alley. Her brain wants real, properly challenging food, not mere _stuffing_ .  
  
“So will you be joining us groundside?”  
  
She can’t hold back a little terrified - at least half-terrified, she’s toughened up a good deal since coming to the Nexus - giggle at the mental image of herself crouching behind some rock, trying to aim at kett with her hands shaking. This is, as far as she can tell, the biggest concern with this whole project of theirs: they have scientists and hunters, tech experts and engineers, all of them top of the line, handpicked and distinguished. _The Andromeda Initiative is a peace project, make no mistake about that_ but Suvi wonders, whenever she allows herself, who will protect their science bases and their scouts.  
  
“I could teach you how to use a gun,” the Pathfinder offers before Suvi has begun rattling off her never-ending list of Reasons Why Suvi Anwar Should Not Engage in Planetside Adventure. “I’ve got some training, even if I’m not half as good as my…” her voice trails off suddenly.  
  
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Suvi says, wondering why she hasn’t said it already. It’s been on everyone’s mind: the story about the Pathfinder never reaching the promised lands; it’s the talk of the entire space station and it feels a little bit cheap now, realising it. “And your brother, too.”  
  
The Pathfinder - she should really start thinking of her as Ryder, everyone else seems to - gives a small nod.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“And if I ever need to learn about guns…”  
  
A smile now, again. It lands with a thud inside Suvi’s chest, spread open like pages of a book. And a promise of someday .  
   



	3. Dear Ryder

  
_**Eos, Pytheas system, Helius Cluster**_

  
  


 

> To: Ryder  
> From: Suvi
> 
>  
> 
> Dear Ryder
> 
> I've re-read the early reports from Eos again before departure, just checking to see if I'm missing something. Don't think I have. It sounds awful down there but if anyone can make sense of it it's you and your team. Just wanted to let you know that. Break a leg!  
> Once again, I'm so honoured to be here!
> 
> Suvi  
> 
> 
> P.S I found myself with some unexpected free time and wrote a summary of what I've read about the biological and geographical challenges down on Eos.

  
  


Sara reads it at a terminal in one of the abandoned but functional facilities down on Eos. SAM has overridden the network and both Cora and Liam are using it, grabbing the opportunity to work like they would back on the ship while still planetside.

Sara reads it and she smiles, quickly and to herself, at _unexpected_ _free_ _time_. As if time on the Tempest is a life sentence, or as if being a science officer is. Maybe it is. There's a kind of allure in that idea, makes her feel less alone out there.

  


* * *

  
  


 

> To: Suvi  
> From: Ryder
> 
>  
> 
> Hey  
> This place is like something from the kind of horror vids (ghost, always ghosts, love them) that I'd watch back in high school (and have nightmares about even if I'd never admit it to anyone). Everything echoes of something else.
> 
> Sara
> 
> P.S. What do you mean by 'unusual levels of Vanadium? Why are they unusual and what might have caused it?
> 
>   
>    
> 

The Tempest is so quiet when crew is out scouting, a skeleton of a ship. It always seems so odd to live at a spaceship that isn't in motion but Suvi assumes she will get used to that, too. Everything else has become habitual around them recently. Or as close to it as possible, at any rate.

She reads Ryder's message with a cup of freshly made tea in one hand, the pad of her thumb running around the rim of it; when she pauses, the heat from the water makes her skin damp.   
  
The Tempest is quiet but the message makes a noise in her, a soft rattling sound of impressions and boundaries being shuffled around. 

  


* * *

  


 

> To: Ryder  
> From: Suvi
> 
>  
> 
> Dear Ryder,
> 
> Ghost stories? I never would have guessed. Of course, now I can't get it out of my head since I heard what SAM could make of the sensory data you found in those abandoned buildings. Science has never truly dismissed the theory that certain energies can linger, thus creating impulses or impressions that can be interpreted as seeing a ghost. (Sorry, I hope you can sleep even after reading this.)
> 
> And I'm so excited you actually read my summary! I tried to answer your questions briefly but it got out of hand very quickly so I attached a separate document with my thoughts.
> 
> Suvi
> 
>  

  
Why wouldn’t she have guessed? Sara rakes a hand through her hair and re-reads the sentence again. What about her is non-ghost story like?    
  
“Good news?” Liam shoots her a glance across the room. They’re camped for the night at one of the abandoned outposts and Cora has promised to bring them some dinner or at least give it her best shot.   
  
“The usual.” She shuts down Suvi’s email but it lingers, a secret smile at the back of her mind.   
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

> To: Suvi  
> From: Ryder
> 
>  
> 
> Hey Suvi,
> 
> Don't know if you've read much by Dr Foster-Uuvi? She gave a lecture once back when I studied Prothean history and I wanted to read more from her so I found an essay she collaborated on – about the plausibility of a supernatural plane of existence. It's anthropology, so maybe not up your alley?
> 
> I can't say I really understood much of your geological analysis, but I'll come by and talk more once we're back on the Tempest.
> 
> Sara
> 
>  

  
Some days Suvi likes to tour the ship when she’s having her post-lunch tea. A slow walk through the decks, scanning everything for details she’s previously missed. When she’s read up on a position like this one, studied all reports and guides available, they typically would mention familiarity with one’s surroundings as an important thing. To know the vessel you serve on, consider it a part of your crew.   
  
The Tempest is a pretty nice colleague, she will give it that. If nothing else, it provides her with plenty of new places to read and write at.   
  
Today she reads her messages down in engineering with Gil’s constant work-related grumbling - something about Kallo, something else about restrictions; Suvi swallows a smile and pushes her own comments on the subjects aside -  as a soundtrack.    
  


* * *

 

>   
>    
>    
>  To: Ryder   
>  From: Suvi  
>    
>    
>    
>  Dear Ryder,   
>    
>  Looking forward to discuss that with you then! I doubt we can track the essay you mentioned down here in Andromeda, so you will have to tell me all about it. Would have loved to read it!   
>    
>  Please stay safe down there.   
>    
>  Suvi  
>    
>    
>    
> 

As the strange new world unfolds before her eyes down in the heat and the sand, Sara closes her mind to the fear of it all and tries to remember normalcy. She thinks about going over ship functions with Gil, listen to Kallo's explanation of the galaxy map and sitting down in the near-empty crew quarters with Liam and Cora, trying to resemble ordinary soldiers on an ordinary mission.   
  
She thinks about Suvi.   



	4. Ghosts of galaxies past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half of this has been posted before as a drabble at my tumblr.

_**Milky Way**_  
  
  
  
She’s fourteen and there’s a girl in her class who has dimples in her cheeks whenever she smiles, endless smiles that seem to tear something from Sara’s chest and never really return it and she stares, just _stares_ until Fred and Tamar poke her to make her stop. Sometimes the girl looks back at her, suddenly quiet and unsmiling, and Sara swears she can see that spark of recognition somewhere in her gaze, the light of familiarity.

The girl - April, her name is April and though it sounds like a joke her sister is called June - is tall and fast and sharp and one day in the middle of a blazing summer she stands outside the Ryder’s home, asking for Scott.

“He’s not here,” Sara hears herself say. “But I can hang out with you. I’m good at hanging out… with people.”

April just stares at her before she turns on her heel and leaves.

  


—--

  


Her sixteenth birthday, full of music and treats and hastily wrapped gifts behind her parents’ wide smiles; Sara dances with her arms above her head as Scott sneaks off with a red-haired girl he’s met at one of dad’s boring work parties. She’s the daughter of some high-ranking Alliance brass. Scott claims she’s _wild_ , his eyes glittering.

“Some birthday present he’s getting,” Sara says, rolling her eyes at Tina. Tina who looks at her like she’s a holo of some amazing historical figure or something equally exciting. It’s not entirely mutual but mutual enough. Kind of like Scott and the wild one, she assumes.

They’re dancing close now, practically chest to chest and Sara isn’t sure if she should step away or grab Tina by the waist and drag her off to that bathroom on the third floor where nobody ever goes.

Then Tina leans in, her breath ghosting over Sara’s cheek. It’s not entirely mutual but here they are but they still kiss on the dance floor, sweaty palms and bathed breath and Sara’s head spins, spins, spins.

“I’ve got a birthday present for you as well.”

“Can I see you naked?” She speaks the words before they even form in her head. Or at least that’s how it feels. A stupid rush of _noise_ leaving her body.

“Sara!” Tina looks embarrassed, everything about her suddenly closed-off, sealed shut. “You’re such an _idiot_.”

  


—--

  


She’s nineteen going on twenty and there’s a senior supervisor at C-Sec with blue hair and something that looks like cybernetics behind her left eye; Sara can’t remember anything in her presence, can’t even recall _what_ she needs to remember.

Kia Osten, seventeen years older and with a voice that sounds like something from a dark, neon-lit bar somewhere on Omega. Not that Sara’s ever been to Omega but there are _stories_. There are stories and she’s drunk at an office party - the turians down on section Z throws the best ones in the history of the Citadel, according to some - and Kia stands by the bar, one hand raking through the hair. That hair.

“Can I touch it?” she blurts, half-aware of her own feet that keeps walking across the floor until she’s standing by the bar, too. “The hair. It looks so… blue. Can I feel it?”

Kia frowns, sipping her drink while she scrutinizes the young, ridiculous trainee in front of her.

“Beg your pardon, Ryder… was it?”

“Ryder, yeah.” She nods, eagerly.

“Go home, Ryder. You’re drunk.”

Sara leans forward, thinking about her body in a self-conscious way that makes her chafe on the inside, pondering all its angles and curves and how they look which is hopeless in the first place. Bodies are organic, not meant for posing. When she says that, too, Kia gives a little laughter.

“Well, at least that’s true.”

“It totally is.” Sara wonders if the blue hair is as soft as it looks, if it will spill between her fingers and fall across Kia’s back or get caught up in something half-way -

“Ryder. Go _home_.” Her voice cuts into Sara’s blurred train of thoughts; seconds later it has mellowed, though the contours are still sharp. “I’ve ordered a cab.”

  
  


—--

  
  


She’s six hundred and twenty-five tangled up in - _with_? _to_? - an AI and every time the science officer on the Tempest speaks her name she wants to giggle like a schoolgirl. Some things you cannot outrun or out-sleep.

 _Sara_ , she says, her voice measured and soft and filled with promises. She’s happy to be here, she says, happy to serve and her record is interesting; there are _so_ many things Sara notices in it and thinks _oh, yes_ or _really,why?_  and they could talk for hours, she imagines, about methods and evaluation and artifacts and analysis. Comparing notes, challenging beliefs, thought chained to thought, chained to questions and open endings.

There are so many things, so many _topics_.

“I think you’re cute and I like seeing you up here,” Sara says instead, gaze fastened on the galaxy map. Light-years from home and she wonders when it will cease to make her stumble. _Pathfinder_. “Also, the accent. The accent is… I mean, it’s not the only thing, but…uh.”

But when she looks at Suvi - quick glance, as though limited eye-contact can erase words - she notices that the other woman smiles, a tucked-in little smile that hits like a thunderstorm on Habitat 7.

“Feeling’s mutual, Ryder.”  
  
And when Sara returns her attention to the stars ahead, they all dance.   
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
She’s ten and she’s always known her first kiss would be Shona next door.   
  
Shona, with her bright smile and endless supply of tech toys her mother brings back from the shop she works in.   
  
Shona, who’s shorter than Suvi but already developed - _developed_ , in a way that makes the boys giggle and tease and Suvi curls her hands so hard into fists there are nail marks in her palms. But Shona just stares back at them, then lifting her gaze to something else entirely. Suvi could _kill_ for that calm. Or at least sell one of her brothers.   
  
They kiss in Shona’s bedroom once. Then again, three years later.   
  
“You’re the prettiest girl in school,” Suvi says, not knowing what to do with her hands.   
  
“I’m dating Ben Luhrman,” Shona says, quickly, before they kiss again.   
  
  
  
\---   
  
  
  
Seventeen and locked inside her room, crying every night for two weeks. She can no longer remember why.   
  
Years later when she moves out and finds her old stuff, the name _Skylar_ is scribbled across several surfaces.   
  
  
  
\--   
  
  
  
  
She’s twenty, full of unresolved hopes and dreams, _electricity_ in every thought.   
  
Bahar is a couple of years older with a past. A girlfriend somewhere, Suvi knows but prefers not to think about. It’s peripheral like everything outside of the academic bubble they live in. Bahar is here where things matter. They’re occasional lab partners, occasional drinking buddies, temporarily fluttering in and out of each other’s arms and beds and Suvi wakes up most days wrapped in strong arms and tendrils of dark hair. She crashes into sleep most night with her lips against a warm stretch of skin, her fingers resting along the soft sides of Bahar’s breast. It’s intoxicating and new, this _intimacy_ .   
  
Her flat is an oasis in the desert that is university: tiny and worn-down, smells of chemicals and soup, in the evenings mostly of beer and sex, of fucking each other in every way possible and then some, figuring out and calculating every angle and inch, every hidden spot and surprising pleasure. They’re adventurers, nomads, geniuses.     
  
“Run away with me,” Suvi suggests on the night of their graduation, her blood full of wine and her heart full of raging grief at the thought of saying goodbye. “ _Marry_ me.”   
  
“It was never like that.” Bahar brushes with the back of her hand across Suvi’s cheek.   
  
It was.   
  
It _was_.   
  
  
  
\--   
  
  
  
  
She’s thirty - _six-hundred-and-thirty-something_ \- and even elbow-deep in research in the lab facilities on the Tempest the sardonic voice on the comm link manages to undo her, time and time again. A bad joke, a lame pun, voice laced with dark humor and Suvi bites down on her lower lip, grinning into her shoulder, tugging at a piece of equipment.   
  
She’s thirty - or something like that - and outliving everyone and everything and no matter how absurdly high her levels of scientific curiosity are, there’s a suffocating grief in that thought.     
  
_Suffocating_ , but Ryder stands there with a confidence she shouldn’t realistically have managed to develop just yet and for the first time since they met, Suvi can see why they made her Pathfinder.   
  
“Can I sit here with you for a while?” she asks, as though it’s not her bridge on _her_ ship where she’s free to roam as she pleases.     
  
Suvi nods. Pats a seat and nods.   
  
Neither of them say anything for half an hour and the silence dances through her veins, straight into her heart.   
  
  



End file.
